Monthly Archives: July 2002

For the first time in a long time, I’m excited about a project, and not daunted in the face of the amount of work I have to do for it. I mean, it’s still a fucking lot, don’t mistake, but my I’m actually feeling this one earlier than the night before it’s due. good sign. Now everyone’s just gotta wish me luck (not necessarily literally) and pray hard (it’s gotta be worth trying) that I kick ass in this last week. Cheerio, can’t tell if I’m about to wig out or pass out, but hey, that’s when architecture school gets interesting, right?

So this morning before taking a shower, I left the pair of socks I was gonna put on in the bathroom while getting a cup of coffee. The cat was in there rolling around on my jeans and looking rather happy. When I come back with a cup, the cat has my paired up socks in its mouth and won’t let me have them. Every time I get close to it, it hisses. I finally grab ahold of the socks, and the cat won’t let go. To try to get it off, I pick it up off the ground by the socks, and it continues hanging on and hissing as best it can. I decide that if I put it down, maybe it’ll let go of my socks and I can grab them. No such luck, it just goes trotting through the apartment with my socks. I chase it a whole lap of the place and then just say fuck it and take my shower.

First thing I see when I get out of the bathroom is the socks – unpaired, but lying right next to each other outside the door. damn stupid cat. what was the point of all that. damn stupid human. if there wasn’t a point, why did I play its game?

In 1967 the fully revised French version of The Society of the Spectacle was published, with the following. In 1968 there were student riots fomented in part by the ideas of this book.

Thesis 115
“Signs of a new and growing tendency toward negation proliferate in the more economically advanced countries. The spectacular system reacts to these signs with incomprehension or attempts to misrepresent them, but they are sufficient proof that a new period has begin. After the failure of the working class’s first subversive assault on capitalism, we are now witness to the failure of capitalist abundance. On one hand, we see anti-union struggles of western workers that have to be repressed (and repressed primarily by the unions themselves); at the same time rebellious tendencies among the young generate a protest that is still tentative and amorphous, yet already clearly embodies a rejection ot the specialized sphere of the old politics, as well as of art and everyday life. These are two sides of the same coin, both signalling a new spontaneous struggle emerging under the sign of criminality, both portents of a second proletarian onslaught on class society. When the enfants perdus of this as-yet immobile horde enter once again upon the battlefield, which has changed yet stayed the same, a new General Ludd will be at their head – leading them this time in an onslaught on the machinery of permitted consumption.”

(Guy DeBord. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Thesis 115. Page 85-6. Zone Books. New York. Originally published in France as La Societe du Spectacle in 1967 by Buchet-Chastel.)

dude, don’t freak out. you don’t have to go on a date with me if you win my Little Pink contest. I was just hopelessly angling. But I’ve had three of my friends say “yeah, it was the date with you that scared me off” so I am posting to reassure that the date thing was a joke.

So do your Little Pink best. Please. you can imagine what kind of vote of no confidence it is that between here and the forum like three people have responded.

Hey ho, kids. This is damien thorne, drummer from everyone’s favorite band they’ve never seen.
Funnyman, Dr. Zeus, Fusil! and I were just sitting around at rehearsal between takes of “(Baby Let’s Take Your Clothes Off and Play a) Game of Sex” and as he passed the freebase pipe to me, Dr. Zeus’s eyes lit up with something other than look of the sweet rock hitting his alcohol and valium soaked brain.
As the cloud of pungent smoke came coughed out of his mouth, he muttered the most amazing phrase I’ve ever heard –

Little Pink.

After he got off the floor and the blood started returning to his head, he explained that Little Pink was “Little Pink…” or “Little Pink _________” fill in the blank.
We’re Little Pink whatever you want us to be.
We can decide on a band name before we go on stage, and change it whenever we want.
Whenever we do a cover we can suddenly transmogrify into, for example, Little Pink the misfits.
or Little Pink bay city rollers.
It’s great. We mean to you what you want us to mean.

So this is the point where I actually mention what the contest is.
We’re interested in all things little and pink in this world, and we want your input. Reply to this post with a list – from one to as many as you want – of YOUR favorite Little Pink things. Whomever suggests the coolest Little Pink thing, concept, person, or etcetera – wins the contest. Wanna know what you’ll win?

The winner will be chosen one week from today, unfortunately we couldn’t get the networks in on this, so it’ll just be me, Duane, posting the winner and their one winningest suggestion to my lj and the satellite show forum at delphi, and maybe to artofsorts.com, official webpage of Dr. Zeus – Thunder God of Rhyme, our lead singer (aka Jed).

What you’ll win: a date with Duane. if you want it. We’ll go dutch. please??? or, if you’re in the LA area or will be soon, you can also pick out your favorite little pink thing that you own that you wouldn’t mind runining in a meet and greet with the band. You get to watch them rehearse, and have your little pink thing signed by Funnyman, Fusil!, damien, and Dr. Zeus. and maybe even andrew if he decides to show up for rehearsal.

Just to get y’all in the spirit of the contest, I’ve posted a list of some of my favorite Little Pink things below.

some stupid label whore put a gucci screensaver on this computer. hey, at least now it’s stylish when no one’s around.

When you’re trying to read multiple books at once, it’s always something that you haven’t cracked in months that you wind up reading for hours. I got through 3/4 of Borges’s collected fictions a while ago, and then just moved on to other things. Tonight, totally unexpectedly I picked it back up and geeked out on his brilliance for two hours.

I’ve decided a few things
Norse Mythology = cool. I need to read more.
I need another tattoo.
and most importantly-
work exile is beginning. Shit’s due Aug. 7.

so I love you all, but I probably won’t see a lot of you in person until the beginning of the school year, unless you’re back Indianaway, and I’ll see you in three and a half weeks…

On that note, my parents can’t find any cheap airline tickets, so it looks like I’ll be driving back to stay for only two and a half weeks. Of people that are close to LA, does anyone wanna drive back w/ me? good vacation. visit the midwest, expand your horizons.
It’ll be cheap. If we keep focused, it’s two 16 hour days drive, about $170 in gas each way, $25 or 30 each for food, etc, and about $50 for a hotel room. Or if someone know someone in denver or amarillo or thereabouts, that’d be covered.
so $250 round trip for each person, cheaper ($170 round trip for three) if there are more, or it’d be $225 ($140 ea. for 3) or so if we don’t have to stay in a hotel. My parents are wonderful and lovely and will feed you well and be a lot of fun…

Listened to the first Rancid album for the first time in a while, and you know what I realized?

They’re pretty fuckin’ silly. I mean, their lyrics aren’t very smart, and they fall into the trap of all those old ’77 punker cliches and the whole blue collar working class silliness, without any REAL discourse about class issues or anything much deeper at all. I’m not doubting their revolutionary cred or anything, they’re just sorta silly. And sure, there are some songs, especially on Let’s Go that do their topics justice – “Radio” “Salvation” “Harry Bridges” “St. Mary” “Motorcycle Ride” – and And Out Come the Wolves is a great album, more intent on telling stories than political polemicism, so it doesn’t really suffer. but basically, Rancid, your time has come and gone.

I don’t love you anymore. Operation Ivy is much older, and still more pertinent than most anything you’ve done.

The director of the Fine Arts photolab, David, has been staff here for four years, has taken classes here much of that time in pursuit of a masters, and taught classes at other schools, but never here. Starting in the fall, he’s teaching a photo class.

That means he will simultaneously be staff, faculty, and a student. The thought of that is just cool.